Laminators for securing sheets of resist material simultaneously to opposite sides of a panel are known in the art but these machines only were able to select the width ahead of time by cutting the rolls to the desired dimension. The sheet material was drawn from the rolls and laminated to both sides of a plurality of panels being fed in sequence between the two sheets of resist material. In this manner, the individual panels would be connected together by a finite length of resist material thereby stringing the panels together like link-sausages. It was then necessary to cut the individual panels apart and perform time-consuming and costly trimming operations.
To overcome the above problem, an improved laminator was introduced of the type described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,658,629. This laminator will cut sheets of resist and laminate them to panels within a defined perimeter. As the sheet of resist material is fed from the roll to the drum, a vacuum will hold the resist material in place on the surface of the drum and a cutter will operate at predetermined locations on the drum to cut the sheets into the desired individual length for application to the individual panels. The leading edge only of each sheet of resist material is pressure sealed to the leading edge of the board by means of opposed pressure strips located on the opposed drums. The pressure securement of the leading edge of the film is sufficient to pull the remaining portion of the sheet from the vacuum applied to the interior of the drum and will properly orient the sheets on the opposite sides of the panel for feeding into heating rolls for permanently securing the pre-cut sheets of resist material to opposite sides of the panel. Although this mode of operation overcame the link-sausage problem, it was found that there was insufficient control of the trailing edge of the resist sheet as it left the drum. The trailing edge of the sheet would drop onto the panel and immediately stick prior to being rolled out and as a result, film wrinkling occurred. Also, it was found that the cutter mechanism would leave flakes or debris which would cause defects in the resist covered panels. Another disadvantage was that there was a lack of versatility in that the machine would handle only a fixed-size panel to which was applied a fixed-size piece of film. This type of machine also had high maintenance costs.